Yet another possibility for Fermi's Paradox

[Ten oz]

2 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

But that is my point, we are approaching an asymptote. 

There is nothing either of us can know about the future beyond what little we live to see. 

[dimreepr]

1 minute ago, Ten oz said:

There is nothing either of us can know about the future beyond what little we live to see. 

Indeed.

But that future is made of ever decreasing circles.

[Ten oz]

24 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Indeed.

But that future is made of ever decreasing circles.

Decreasing in absolutely time? What is your context? 

[dimreepr]

44 minutes ago, Ten oz said:

Decreasing in absolutely time? What is your context? 

what context do I need?

[Ten oz]

48 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

what context do I need?

What is decreasing? 

[Moontanman]

14 hours ago, Ten oz said:

Why wouldn't there be? 

I don't think we (humans) have a definition for life which could be applied beyond earth. All life on Earth has the same number of DNA base pairs. We only know of one type of life and any thing which deviates from earth life would possibly be either unrecognizable or classified as some sort of autonomous chemical machine. 

This is a point which has always stuck me. Why hasn't there be other genesis of life here on earth? If we are truly in a "Goldilocks" zone and "Earth-like" planets are most ideal places life might form than why has it only happened once here on earth? This points to  one of your arguments; no shame in admitting we don't know.  

Yes we have a working definition of life https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/life's_working_definition.html

Why would you think there would be a second genesis of life here on Earth? Life would explode as soon as it started to reproduce taking over all available niches. Any other pre life would be consumed before it could do anything. Having said that there is the concept of a shadow biosphere, when we look for life we only look for life as we know it. Our tests would not show another type of life. Some research has been done in that direction but not much has been learned yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_biosphere

7 hours ago, DrP said:

No, but they might mean we can better resolve the information we obtain from our current telescopes or the current ones could be improved. We still look at the light from the stars like we did 30 years ago, but now we are more sophisticated in the way we interpret the data, looking for planetary bypasses and things.. things we didn't do back then. We couldn't detect black holes...  we have no new tech to surpass the telescopes we used then (although they are probably better) - we just know how to spot them now by looking at the images they warp and what orbits them.    

You are probably better informed than I am with regard to what currently goes on.  I am a lay observer of what gets reported. imo we have only just started looking... in terms of the 3 year old boy searching for the octopus, we have just put on our snorkel and have waded out up to our knees, have stuck our head under the water a few times and declared that there are no octopussies.   I could be wrong, but I think we have only just begun our searching and I think we will improve our techniques over the next few centuries.

The unknown does get bigger as we answer questions, how ever would you find it reasonable to dip your head underwater and look for something you knew nothing about? We know there are octopus in the ocean, if we didn't we wouldn't have the concept of looking for them. I can't say there are no dualheadedtwillmuffs in the ocean. I have no idea what that is so to say there are none at would at least imply you know what they are... 

4 hours ago, Ten oz said:

Why no? After centuries of people like Leonardo da Vinci and Sir George Cayley working on human flight man final accomplished it in 1904 just over a hundred ago. Since then we've broken the sound barrier and left Earth's atmosphere. Motion picture camera's were invented in 1890. The first movies people watched were black and white and lacked sound. Today we watch movies which integrate motion picture in color with computer generated images which the average person isn't capable of distinguishing from reality. My grandmother passed in 1996 at 87yrs of age. She has been born just after the turn of the century in Nebraska. She literally grew up without running water or electricity in her home. At the time of her death she had running water, electricity, cable TV, and dial up internet.

Technology has the ability to out pace any individual humans wildest projections. I bought my first cell phone in 2000. At that time cell phones did nothing; they just made phone calls. Putting a camera on a phone was consider a major step back then. In my opinion I see no reason to assume that in another hundred years society wouldn't have change and new technologies replaced old technologies. 

In the past technological limits were assumed with little to no reason. Now we have reasons not to expect things like FTL communication, a better cell phone is vastly less than ftl... 

3 hours ago, Ten oz said:

It isn't merely an empty assumption to acknowledge the historical trend. Human have moved from the discovery of fire to Nuclear Fusion. There is no reason to assume invention and discovery will stop or has reach any sort of natural limit. The technology you are referencing has only been used for the last 80yrs or so which in perspective in a blimp on humanities timeline. Without exception every century of human existence has brought with it change. It is only logical to assume the next century will as well.

"Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated or interact in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently of the others, even when the particles are separated by a large distance—instead, a quantum state must be described for the system as a whole.

Measurements of physical properties such as position, momentum, spin, and polarization, performed on entangled particles are found to be appropriately correlated. For example, if a pair of particles are generated in such a way that their total spin is known to be zero, and one particle is found to have clockwise spin on a certain axis, the spin of the other particle, measured on the same axis, will be found to be counterclockwise, as to be expected due to their entanglement. However, this behavior gives rise to paradoxical effects: any measurement of a property of a particle can be seen as acting on that particle (e.g., by collapsing a number of superposed states) and will change the original quantum property by some unknown amount; and in the case of entangled particles, such a measurement will be on the entangled system as a whole. It thus appears that one particle of an entangled pair "knows" what measurement has been performed on the other, and with what outcome, even though there is no known means for such information to be communicated between the particles, which at the time of measurement may be separated by arbitrarily large distances."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

Quantum entanglement is not sending a message... 

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Fair point.

The realist in me acknowledges that we all have faith, for instance, I don't fully understand physics, so when I post a physics question, I have faith that the experts here provide knowledgeable answers.

I remember reading something on this site saying that it's not what it appears, in that it doesn't really travel, I do get your point but I  also remember watching a Sean Caroll lecture, in which he explained just how much the physics community does know about the universe and how few gaps there are.

You have reasonable expectations based on past performance, that is not faith... 

2 hours ago, Ten oz said:

That is my point. We don't know what we don't know and every century for 10,000 years our knowledge base has collectively increased. So I see no reason to assume it is anymore likely that something will exceed our use of radio than it is something won't. Radio has existed through all of humanity yet it took humans hundred of thousands of years to notice it. Why assume there are other things also hidden in plain view all around us?

EM radiation existed all around us, we saw it, we just didn't know the details, considerable difference from it being hidden. 

[Ten oz]

17 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Yes we have a working definition of life https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/life's_working_definition.html

From your link:

"In a recent paper in Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, Christopher Chyba and I argue that it is a mistake to try to define 'life'. Such efforts reflect fundamental misunderstandings about the nature and power of definitions.

Definitions tell us about the meanings of words in our language, as opposed to telling us about the nature of the world. In the case of life, scientists are interested in the nature of life; they are not interested in what the word "life" happens to mean in our language. What we really need to focus on is coming up with an adequately general theory of living systems, as opposed to a definition of "life."

Your link is more of arguments pro and con (mostly pro) for the value in attempting to define non- terrestrial life. It isn't a clear definition.

22 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Why would you think there would be a second genesis of life here on Earth? Life would explode as soon as it started to reproduce taking over all available niches. Any other pre life would be consumed before it could do anything. Having said that there is the concept of a shadow biosphere, when we look for life we only look for life as we know it. Our tests would not show another type of life. Some research has been done in that direction but not much has been learned yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_biosphere

A hypothesis formulated entirely based on Earth's life and never tested or applied in any practical way to non-terrestrial life for the simple and obvious reason that life else where is a giant missing value as it hasn't be discovered or is known to exist. 

 

27 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

In the past technological limits were assumed with little to no reason.

A judgement made with the advantage of hindsight. In real time people didn't believe their assumptions had little to no reason. Who knows what those looking back hundreds of years from now will think of our reasons; I think no one alive today can answer that with any certainty. 

 

30 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Quantum entanglement is not sending a message... 

I didn't say it was.

[dimreepr]

22 hours ago, Ten oz said:

What is decreasing? 

Advancement...

22 hours ago, Moontanman said:

You have reasonable expectations based on past performance, that is not faith... 

No, it's solipsism, what evidence have you personally gathered? If you rely on the work of others, you have faith.

[Moontanman]

21 hours ago, Ten oz said:

From your link:

"In a recent paper in Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, Christopher Chyba and I argue that it is a mistake to try to define 'life'. Such efforts reflect fundamental misunderstandings about the nature and power of definitions.

Definitions tell us about the meanings of words in our language, as opposed to telling us about the nature of the world. In the case of life, scientists are interested in the nature of life; they are not interested in what the word "life" happens to mean in our language. What we really need to focus on is coming up with an adequately general theory of living systems, as opposed to a definition of "life."

Your link is more of arguments pro and con (mostly pro) for the value in attempting to define non- terrestrial life. It isn't a clear definition.

A hypothesis formulated entirely based on Earth's life and never tested or applied in any practical way to non-terrestrial life for the simple and obvious reason that life else

where is a giant missing value as it hasn't be discovered or is known to exist. 

So you critique is based on me giving you a source that shows there is still some doubt? I would feel a bit less than honest if I didn't show the truth as it is rather than imply only what I want to show. Yes, we do have a working definition of life, admittedly it is based on the life we know, how could it not be? Life is an organised chemical system that metabolizes and reproduces with variation, yes there are other opinions but they most debate by admitting we cannot be sure. I would bet that life, if it is based on aluminum, dissolved in silica oceans  would still show those signs, if it didn't it wouldn't be life. If you narrow life too much then we have already created it, or at least could. We can make machines that make copies of themselves, but that is not life. An AI is not life, it can be self aware but not be able to reproduce, or reproduce but with no possibility of variation. Like Data on Star Trek, several episodes debated on whether or not he was a life form, not if he was alive. There is a difference... 

21 hours ago, Ten oz said:

 

A judgement made with the advantage of hindsight. In real time people didn't believe their assumptions had little to no reason. Who knows what those looking back hundreds of years from now will think of our reasons; I think no one alive today can answer that with any certainty. 

No, in fact we used to say it might be impossible to fly faster than sound, but we knew things could travel faster than sound we just didn't know if we could build something that could. It was said that man could never travel to the moon, not because it was physically impossible, and the people made that claim soon realized they had over stepped their knowledge because the only reason they said that was because no one had really tried. But it was possible to show that is wasn't impossible, just very difficult to do with the technology of that time frame. 

Other things like the speed of light are a bit different, but I admit that in recent years at least we have a mathematical basis for the possibility, but it not the same as faster than sound or travel to the moon. There are actual physical reasons it cannot be done, of course new physics might change that but I wouldn't bet the farm on it. Lots of things are really difficult, many may make the mistake of thinking difficult means impossible. It does not... 

 

21 hours ago, Ten oz said:

 

I didn't say it was.

Then why did you bring it up in a conversation about communication? 

16 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Advancement...

No, it's solipsism, what evidence have you personally gathered? If you rely on the work of others, you have faith.

Actually I have gathered evidence of some things, nothing on that level but I do know how and I know that I could at least in theory replicate the work of others. I know that evidence has been gathered and replicated by others, it not just something people pulled out of their rectums one night while drunk... 

[dimreepr]

6 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Actually I have gathered evidence of some things, nothing on that level but I do know how and I know that I could at least in theory replicate the work of others. I know that evidence has been gathered and replicated by others, it not just something people pulled out of their rectums one night while drunk... 

3

So, you can replicate Einstein/Durac... etc mathematics? You're never too old or drunk to learn something new, have faith...

[Moontanman]

3 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

So, you can replicate Einstein/Durac... etc mathematics? You're never too old or drunk to learn something new, have faith...

I can honestly say i would come closer to that than replicating belief in things no one can have evidence of...  

[dimreepr]

1 minute ago, Moontanman said:

I can honestly say i would come closer to that than replicating belief in things no one can have evidence of...  

Can you?

[Moontanman]

4 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Can you?

Yes... 

[dimreepr]

1 minute ago, Moontanman said:

Yes... 

Go on then...

[Moontanman]

1 minute ago, dimreepr said:

Go on then...

So you not willing to believe me? Why? 

[dimreepr]

Just now, Moontanman said:

So you not willing to believe me? Why? 

Because I have faith that you're talking bollox...

[Moontanman]

Just now, dimreepr said:

Because I have faith that you're talking bollox...

Prove it... 

[dimreepr]

1 minute ago, Moontanman said:

Prove it... 

You first.

[Moontanman]

Just now, dimreepr said:

You first.

So much for solipsism and any possible usefulness it may have in describing reality...  

[dimreepr]

1 minute ago, Moontanman said:

So much for solipsism and any possible usefulness it may have in describing reality...  

LOL

My poison is scrumpy, what's yours?

[Ten oz]

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Advancement...

I assume you mean knowledge and not physical? In either case I disagree. If knowledge were sand on a beach everything humans know represents a couple of grains of sand. Humans are from a state of diminishing returns with regards to reaching down and picking up more sand. I am confused as to why you'd feel otherwise?

2 hours ago, Moontanman said:

Then why did you bring it up in a conversation about communication? 

In response to what I had highlighted I was saying that there is still much to be discovered and used it as an example of a process we've observed but do not yet understand. 

[Moontanman]

34 minutes ago, Ten oz said:

I assume you mean knowledge and not physical? In either case I disagree. If knowledge were sand on a beach everything humans know represents a couple of grains of sand. Humans are from a state of diminishing returns with regards to reaching down and picking up more sand. I am confused as to why you'd feel otherwise?

In response to what I had highlighted I was saying that there is still much to be discovered and used it as an example of a process we've observed but do not yet understand. 

I see, so it was a meaningless quip meant to to underscore that humans do not know everything? So what else is new? Do you really think that knowledge is unlimited? Human knowledge is two grains of sand on a beach? You know this how exactly? It's just as meaningful to say that human knowledge is equal to all the grains of sand on the beach and what we left is equated by two more grains of sand. There is no way to know at any one point when knowledge is complete and it's as meaningless now as it ever was to claim it... 

[Ten oz]

1 hour ago, Moontanman said:

Do you really think that knowledge is unlimited?

Is there uneven anecdotal evidence to show that it isn't? Humans have continuously acquired new knowledge for hundreds of thousands of years and at a rate which has been  increasing. With AI coming online there is good reason to assume the rate will increase even more.

 

1 hour ago, Moontanman said:

Human knowledge is two grains of sand on a beach? You know this how exactly?

I think it is a fair anecdote. Consider the rate at which micro-processing has grown and the impact that has on our ability to expand the rate at which we process information. The below scale is just since 1971. Your smart phones is over a million times more powerful than the computers NSA was using in the 1960's. Assuming you believe human can still move forward at least far as we have already come I think a couple grains of sand on a beach in fair. Anecdotes are not used for accuracy but rather for perspective.   

  

Edited December 16, 2017 by Ten oz
Typos

[Moontanman]

1 hour ago, Ten oz said:

Is there uneven anecdotal evidence to show that it isn't? Humans have continuously acquired new knowledge for hundreds of thousands of years and at a rate which has been  increasing. With AI coming online there is good reason to assume the rate will increase even more.

I would like to see a citation for this, proving a negative is not really possible. It's easy to ask if I can show it isn't but asking if you can show it will or even can continue to increase much less at an increasing rate needs some evidence. On the other hand, yes there is anecdotal evidence for this, while it is true our knowledge has increased huge discoveries are much more rare than simply showing an ever increasing rate of accuracy. Really big breakthroughs are become ever less numerous and smaller. 100 years ago Einstein come up with relativity, since then we have been putting an ever finer edge on his theory but no really equal breakthroughs have been forthcoming. Even Quantum Mechanics is nearly that old. 

 

1 hour ago, Ten oz said:

 

I think it is a fair anecdote. Consider the rate at which micro-processing has grown and the impact that has on our ability to expand the rate at which we process information. The below scale is just since 1971. Your smart phones is over a million times more powerful than the computers NSA was using in the 1960's. Assuming you believe human can still move forward at least far as we have already come I think a couple grains of sand on a beach in fair. Anecdotes are not used for accuracy but rather for perspective.   

  

The rate at which microprocessing has increased is not a law but simply an observation that is rapidly breaking down as we butt up against theoretical limits. https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2014/02/19/why-has-cpu-frequency-ceased-to-grow. Anecdotes are not always accurate... 

[Ten oz]

2 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

It's easy to ask if I can show it isn't but asking if you can show it will or even can continue to increase much less at an increasing rate

"Although precise measurement of the process of scientific discovery is difficult (Bettencourt et al. 2008), it is well-known that scientific output, whether measured by scientific papers, number of scientific journals, or even the number of new universities, is considered to be one of exponential growth"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3277447/

I find this challenge particularly ironic considering the nature of this thread and the arguments about how far we have come technologically.

10 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

The rate at which microprocessing has increased is not a law but simply an observation that is rapidly breaking down as we butt up against theoretical limits.

Theoretical limits provided we continue to use the same relative materials. Limits would have already been reached decades ago had we stayed with vacuum tubes.